Colleges still invest in their libraries, which signal the institution's reverence for knowledge and commitment to learning. Increasingly, they expect their bookstores to turn a profit, like airport swag concessions.

The "bookstore" I entered Friday was handsome, but with the charm and character of a concourse souvenir shop offering grab-and-go beverages, snacks and flocks of branded apparel. Not a single book in sight.

Past the $69 technical fabric long-sleeve tees, a stairway led down to the textbook department, where a shoulder-high run of shelves displayed current titles along one wall. A large table featured remainders. In back was the textbook corral, looking like the airport service counter where you go to report lost luggage.

The online store features generic books in a template format virtually identical across 700+ colleges.

I spied a sole freestanding bookcase. Without the sign noting faculty publications on one side and books by alumni authors on the other, it would have been at home in a driveway on the last day of a garage sale.

Among the alumni books, Karen Yamashita's I HOTEL stood out from the clutter because its spine is about three inches wide, allowing it to stand upright without supporting volumes. Marathoner Hal Higdon's On the Run from Dogs and People, originally published in 1971, had fallen on its side atop some books as thin as Temperance pamphlets. There were ample copies of a thriller penned by college trustee Larry Perlman, the only title faced out.

I get that college bookstores are not in the business of selling trade books to alumni who visit campus once year. (The store does invite authors to sell their books through the store registers for a few hours at reunion.) Nor are they in the business of flattering our egos. But published writers give evidence of the school's quality, and that list of authors exhibits an interesting range of accomplishments.

The textbook business is changing. Students have options besides the campus store, with rentals and online purchasing. As revenues decline, college CFOs have options, too, with outfits like Follett and Barnes & Noble College ready to take the stores off their hands.

Varney's Book Store, a 126-year-old Kansas institution, has announced it will close all its stores at the end of the month. Its revenue had dropped severely, due to the loss of the K-State Union Bookstore contract to Follett and to online competition. On July 1, University of North Carolina turns over its student store to Barnes & Noble College, which runs more than 700 outsourced stores.

"We’ve remodeled the store, we’ve rebranded, improved our web presence, opened up the Hillside Lounge and partnered with Starbucks, but sales just aren’t keeping pace. The recommendations we followed haven’t changed much in terms of profitability. Either we look for someone to do this more efficiently, or we have to raise prices at The Hill above market standards.”

Given these realities, I won't presume to tell colleges not to privatize their stores, but I will offer a caution.

"Campus Store" better describes what college bookstores are becoming.

Look at the bookstore portals here. Both companies use templates designed to sell textbooks, supplies and trend merchandise. There's no way to order the new Richard Russo or to know it's on the shelf in the physical store.

Follett clients K-State, Notre Dame, Stanford, Boston College and Arizona State sites are distinguishable from each other only by the logo in the upper corner—and whether the Summer Trends module portrays stock photo students or pictures of college logoware. Barnes & Noble College applies school colors to the same layout for Carleton, Wellesley, Eastern New Mexico, Georgia Tech and Dunwoody College of Technology.

Encountering these college stores online and on-floor, you'd be hard-pressed to discern these institutions as places that celebrate learning and literacy.

Fortunately, though, Northfield has a great new bookstore in town called Content, owned and staffed by Carleton grads. I wonder if those other corporatized college towns will be as lucky.

Small businesses and nonprofits have a lot in common: They operate on thin margins, develop strong local ties and support their communities’ economic and social wellbeing.

But what happens to those strong bonds when an online retailing giant comes in with a deal that benefits one side and threatens the other? That was the question at the heart of a recent mini-rebellion led by a feisty western Colorado bookseller, who heard her favorite community radio station, KAFM, promoting a new fundraising partnership with Amazon.

Margie Wilson, owner of Grand Valley Books and another bookstore in Grand Junction, asked, “How does a community-supported organization expect to keep receiving local business support when they encourage their members to shop for books and other products on Amazon?”

At issue was the benign-sounding AmazonSmile program. AmazonSmile lets charities use Amazon’s technology to raise funds from supporters via click-and-forget transactions. After a one-time signup, it automatically uses 0.5 percent of a qualified sale to benefit a nonprofit designated by the purchaser.

These are sales, says Amazon, that were going to the company anyway. The consumer feels good about supporting a chosen charity, and the organization raises more money without added fundraising overhead. For cash-strapped nonprofits with limited technical resources, this looks like a risk-free helping hand.

To Wilson and other main street business owners, it felt more like a slap in the face. A powerful competitor that participates little in the hometown’s charitable or civic affairs was harvesting local goodwill, customer browser information and purchases that sent dollars out of the community.

Wilson decided to take a stand. She enlisted customers, friends of the station and other business owners to ask the KAFM Board to reconsider its participation.

The board did — and then voted to terminate its AmazonSmile partnership, saying: “The fundraising method that sparked the controversy arose out of new technology, but the KAFM Board determined the resolution needed to come from an old ‘technology’ — neighbors helping neighbors.”

The reversal with Amazon shouldn’t make a dent in the station’s revenue. (The average consumer spends just under $1,000 annually with Amazon. That’s $5 per donor who signs on to the program.)

Indeed, I talked to another local nonprofit exec who says its AmazonSmile relationship is not considered a source of charitable dollars. Rather, it’s used more like a cash-back credit card for comparison shopping and making large purchases of items that are hard to find locally. Her search for a solid gallium supplier, for example, led her to a small Ohio company. She estimates this approach has saved thousands of taxpayer dollars on the science kits it produces for public schools.

Not all products sold on Amazon compete with local retailers, and some of the “Amazon” sellers are actually small businesses searching for customers beyond their communities.

So why should local nonprofits be concerned about healthy relations with businesses that do compete with Amazon? Online sales transactions support Amazon’s business model but not the more participatory relationships most nonprofits want to cultivate. In other words, “I gave at Amazon” could become the new line, “I gave at the office.”

Rob Bleiberg, executive director of the Mesa Land Trust, empathizes with fellow nonprofits seeking creative ways to expand fundraising, but also appreciates how good ideas don’t always produce the desired results.

His group once enlisted two businesses to collect a voluntary 1 percent surcharge from their customers to support land preservation. While the experiment was well received, the land trust lacked the resources to scale up the program beyond the original cafe and bike shop. When ownerships changed, it was discontinued.

Bleiberg said small businesses give his organization “wonderful support,” and he counted off the ways: Cash donations, owners serving on the board, memberships, event underwriting, publicity, ties to national suppliers, and providing matching funds to attract donations.

Last year, he said, 65 businesses wrote checks for over $30,000, covering about 7 percent of his organization’s operating budget. And some owners gave as individuals, too. In addition, three local establishments sponsored events and drink promotions earlier this year that raised several thousand dollars for a bike trail project. All these events help build community among like-minded people, and they produced sales that stay in town to recirculate in the local economy.

Local business owners “use the bike trails and see expansion as a good amenity for the town, they’re good citizens, and their support is good advertising to a compelling demographic,” Bleiberg said.

On one of those points, at least, small businesses and Amazon agree.

[This post first appeared as a column distributed by Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). It's also cross-posted at my author site, charliequimby.com.]

Just before I left town this spring, a woman I knew who frequented the Day Center serving the homeless in Grand Junction had been hired to do overnight stocking at a local Wal-Mart. She was very excited—not because it was a great job or that she was the excitable type, but because it gave her "a chance to get out of this situation I'm in."

I'll be very interested to find out if it did.

A few weeks ago, I heard a story from a teacher friend who had spent all year putting extra effort into keeping a child in her fifth-grade class. The girl had six different residences during the year, including a motel and the apartment of his father's ex-girlfriend, who the dad was trying to get removed as a custodial adult because it turned out the gf was bad news.

Through all the drama and turmoil, the girl kept making it to class—largely because of three factors: a federal law that guarantees homeless children transportation to the school where they are enrolled, regardless of their address; a teacher and support staff who went the extra mile; and a father who stayed employed and cared deeply about what happened to his daughter.

His job was in night warehousing at Wal-Mart.

His supervisor liked him and kept his job open for him when he spent 10 days in jail while a domestic complaint was being sorted through with the ex-girl-friend. By the teacher's account, the father. who came here from rural West Virginia, is stable and hard-working but uneducated and unsophisticated.

[I]n Hennepin County, an average of 330 families sought shelter each
month, an increase of 115 (69%) from two years ago. Of particular
concern is the fact that the data show both the length of stay in a
shelter, and the number of families returning to shelters after periods
of being housed, is increasing. Similarly, Minneapolis and Saint Paul
public schools reported roughly 1000 more children as being homeless
than they did at the recession's height.

My teacher friend described how just finding where the student was staying and getting her to class was only the start of the daily battle. She sometimes got separated from her homework or was unable to complete it. At least in one case, the girl couldn't produce a major, ongoing assignment. With the teacher's help, she located the work—and they found a second version in her things as well.

Despite her stressful home situation, she'd completed the homework twice—but distracted by the chaos around her, she couldn't remember having done it even once.

How long is a motivated, intelligent girl going to be able to keep progressing under this stress? What if she'd been in the classroom of a neophyte Teach for America teacher, instead of having one with nearly 40 years of experience who could navigate all kinds of obstacles in and out of the school? What if the school's systems weren't geared to supporting her special needs and instead treated her as truant or an unmotivated student?

There's clearly dysfunction in the way Minnesota schools are addressing the educational achievement gap. We tend to cast it in terms of a racial divide, but it is also a poverty divide. Temporary and low-wage jobs that seem to offer a way up for people at the bottom don't necessarily offer a path to permanency or stability. (Only 27% of temp jobs lead to "permanent positions" with an employer.)

It's not just Wal-Mart hiring people who desperately need jobs and then paying too little for them to achieve security they desperately need. You could see the same issues unfold at other employers in all kinds of sectors who are hiring better educated workers. Even a marginally higher wage to a temp or contract worker isn't that great if the hours and duration are too low to pay for housing and other basic needs.

Nothing in life is permanent, of course. But for an increasing number of Americans, even the illusion of permanency ain't what it used to be.

Wandering Job Creators are getting to be right up there with The Hook as a tale to scare gullible Minnesotans.

You've heard of them, I'm sure. Those heroic figures who daily fling themselves against hostile government regulation and confiscatory tax rates to bring you jobs that would not have existed without their brilliance, perseverence and wealth. Especially wealth, which, as you know allows them to live anywhere they choose — including South Dakota.

But what job creator would move their residence and business just for a more friendly tax climate?

This urban myth has been repeated often by state Republicans, including House Speaker Kurt Zellers, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch and state party chair Tony Sutton, whose main authority on the subject of jobs comes from killing them during his tenure at Baja Sol.

In one version, Rep. Zellers, about 3:10 into this interview, describes a hypothetical small businesswoman forced to relocate her business to Sioux Falls, SD, or Hudson, WI, in order to "keep her doors open" because Minnesota raised its top tax rate and her business income flows to her personal tax return.

The scenario is unlikely in so many respects.

Assuming our Hudson-bound owner is successful to have a household taxable income of $300,000, the Dayton income tax proposal would take an additional $1550 in taxes. The higher rate would not affect her ability to pay the tax deductible expenses associated with the business, so it's difficult to see how the owner might have to close her doors. She would have slightly less disposable income if her business sales remained flat; if sales declined she would earn less and pay less tax, and if sales rose, she'd make more money and pay a bit more in taxes, too.

To save that $1550, she'd have to change her state of residence and sell her house or add the cost of acquiring a second residence in the new state. In the current housing market, the sale would unlikely be quick or profitable for the owner.

To establish her business in the new location, at minimum she would have to locate new space, change her business communications (letterhead, phone, website, signs), reinstall systems, reregister vehicles, etc. If she is a professional or tradesperson, she may also have to obtain a license in the new state, register her business and become acquainted with state rules and tax regulations. There will likely be some business interruption and revenue loss associated with a move.

She might be able to count on retaining her customers if her business is conducted virtually or if they remain in the same geographic radius. If she has employees, they may decide to move to the new location with her — or she will have to go through the work and risk of finding a new and comparably performing work force.

She will encounter new competition in a new location and may have to introduce herself to new customers and suppliers. For about 15 years, my company has maintained a sales office in Atlanta that we tried to expand into a second creative shop. The regional business culture made it a struggle and we eventually stopped pouring money into the attempt. Unless a business serves national clients, it will be challenging to pick up new customers as the new kid in town.

Relocating retail and service businesses — the vast majority of businesses affected by the Dayton tax proposal — is risk-laden for the owner, but not necessarily bad for jobs here because other companies will fill the need left behind. For example, Sen. Amy Koch is associated with two family businesses — one in property management and the other providing services to local utilities. If she relocated, could she take those jobs with her or would they have to stay in Minnesota because the properties and utility lines are here?

Yes, we may lose some of the income from the departing high earner, but the greater local loss of jobs is not through migrating owners — it's due to cutting teachers and other public jobs. The idea cutting these positions frees capital to create private sector jobs has some validity, but the impact of losing real jobs is greater than the benefit some phantom jobs. Ask Speaker Zellers about the impact on his family of losing his wife's job as a public school teacher. Would he trade it for his tax cut "job creation?"

When you look at these claims in light of reality, they fall apart, and the media should insist on real examples and data that show this is an actual problem whenever this storyline resurfaces.

I haven't yet read All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, which gives a detailed review of the fingerprints all over the subprime-driven meltdown, but I have noticed a tempest going on over at Amazon related to the book.

When the authors appeared on The Daily Show and in other media to promote the book's launch, readers went to Amazon.com to buy it.

Kindle readers were shocked to find the eBook edition priced almost the same as the hardcover.

Readers argue that a digital-rights-managed edition should be priced substantially lower than the discounted hardcover price of $17.50. The e-readers seem to expect a price point of $9.99.

When I checked the site to grab these links, I noticed the Kindle price had dropped to $14.99, still closer to the hardcover price than to the $9.99 magic number.

Is this Amazon and the publisher simply trying demand pricing during the media blitz, intending all along to drop it? Or did they price it higher thinking the audience (techno-driven financial types?) would not resist the higher price point?

More than one commenter noted the irony of a book about financial misdeeds carrying a higher price.

Whatever was behind the pricing decision, the authors have to be peeved that their Amazon rating has been downgraded by something outside their control. And future authors could also see the same thing befall them until the market settles the question for everyone.

If Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wants to give personal campaign donations to the likes of GOP candidate for Governor Tom Emmer and Tea Party Candidate for Bombthrower Michele Bachmann, that's his right. If Target and other Minnesota corporations want to give money out of the corporate coffers to benefit such candidates, that's also now their right.

But as a shareholder, I'm interested in hearing how the supported front groups like MN Forward will advance Target's (and other Minnesota corporation) business interests. Steinhafel's response has focused so far on Emmer's social policy views, which he implies are at odds with Target's values.

As you know, Target has a history of supporting
organizations and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to
advance policies aligned with our business objectives, such as job
creation and economic growth.

Steinhafel says "We rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or
candidates we support," which is fair, but he also disclaims a political or social agenda — leaving open the question of what the agenda is that gets $150,000 in corporate cash and in-kind contributions.

Since the CEO is silent on that, I checked MN Forward to see what it says about its agenda. Basically, its entire website is a donation page, without any detail about specific policies it stands for:

MN Forward is a new organization established to ensure that
private-sector job creation and economic growth are at the top of the
agenda during the 2010 campaign. We are working with a broad coalition
of Minnesota job creators to elect candidates from both parties who
support policies that enhance job growth in Minnesota.

Okay, no there there.

Let's look at the jobs agenda of Tom Emmer, the candidate so far benefiting from MN Forward's advocacy. He waxes about the good old days when Honeywell and other large companies were the state's big employers. Back in 2008, when Marty Seifert was shopping this story around, I explained why this was not such a scary development. It's still the case.

And Emmer trots out this claim, also debunked in 2008 and updated last month.

Today, an expansive and expensive state government has crippled our
business environments and lost our greatest resource – our people. The
state’s largest employers are now the State of Minnesota, our public
university systems, and the federal government.

Higher taxes and more government spending do not lead to a better
economic climate. Proposals to raise taxes and fees or eliminate tax
incentives for businesses are not restoring our competitive advantage
for business development. A reputation as the highest taxed state in the
nation will not encourage economic growth but only drive it away.

Our state’s future relies on a blueprint for economic development
built on private initiative and the entrepreneurial spirit.
Strengthening our economy through business retention, relocation, and
development in the private sector must be our priority. We must help
create jobs by supporting tax incentives, streamlining permitting, and
reducing mandates.

State government has "lost our people" and "proposals" have not fixed a bad national economy. The blueprint for creating jobs involves tax incentives for business and relaxing oversight and mandates (such as minimum wage regulations?).

Hardly the kind of business case that would earn internal funding from a Target CEO, so maybe there's more meat somewhere. [UPDATE: A Bluestem Prairie has some. ] Instead, all we have to go by are Emmer's more clearly articulated positions.

But that's asking for a lot from a candidate who misses the fact that the same Minnesota business climate he decries supported the phenomenal growth of his two biggest back-door funders — Target and Best Buy.

He just can't stop himself from talking about servers who are making more than restaurant owners because they receive tips in addition to minimum wage. He says something has to be done.

No matter that this claim has been thoroughly debunked.

No matter that the tips come from customers who are making a judgment about the value of the service they received from an individual worker. Why does that exempt the owner from paying employees for their basic performance?

No matter that the amount a business owner might save through a tip credit is negligible and is unlikely to affect menu prices, wages of other employees or result in additional jobs.

No matter that the tip credit penalizes some of the restaurant's top performers, the very type of people the GOP considers their core constituency.

Emmer is tying himself in knots trying to make a point about a minor issue in the greater scheme of what a serious governor must to address. Why is that?

Well, here's a very good indication, from a comment in this post at Talking Points Memo [h/t Hal Davis]:

To folks like Emmert,[sic] the owners are "providing jobs" and investing "their families' future," while workers provide nothing of value to make that investment pay off. Restauranteers are all Galt-like figures whose efforts are cruelly exploited by the people waiting their tables.

The idea that there could ever be any sort of partnership between management and labor is alien to them. The relationship between owner and employee is, in their minds, the same as the relationship between a healthy animal and a leech.

Are you really listening on that listening tour, Tom?

As a former business owner, I can attest that my employees — most of them, anyway — also invested their family's future in my company. They provided the ideas, customer service and effort that — because I had multiple employees — allowed me to make more money that I could possibly make through my own labors, no matter how smart I was or how hard I worked.

In my business, if any employee made more money than I did, it was because they produced substantial revenue and customer satisfaction for the company. And I never resented that fact, because I wrote the check — unlike Emmer's fantasy restaurateurs, whose customers directly pay for that performance.

It's true, only one employee ever drew a bigger check than I. But because I rewarded him and other key employees for creating value for my business, they stuck around.

Two of them now own the company.

That's how it's supposed to work in America, Rep. Emmer. Not by niggling over a few bucks earned by your front line people and whining about government.

He said: "It has been fascinating the number of business people, including some very large company CEOs, who have shared their observation with me in the last week that fewer people in business will ever run for public office when even the GOP party will attack a candidate’s business career."

In the good old days, the GOP adopted the mantle of business. But if you looked closely at the policies it promoted, it wasn't really working on behalf of businesses. It was working for their owners.

Not the same thing at all.

See, where I learned business, we cared about our customer relationships. The GOP fights consumer protections.

Where I learned business, being angry about things and calling other people names was a totally counter-productive way to operate. At the GOP, it's becoming SOP.

Where I learned business, we recognized that employees who were decently paid, had affordable health coverage and were treated with dignity and respect were more productive, treated customers better, stayed with the company longer and were ore willing to contribute to its success. The GOP fights most anything that relates to workplace safety, family leave, health care and minimum wage.

Where I learned business, we understood that community was a valuable source of information, referrals, customers and good employees. The GOP tends to view public investment in a community as a cost burden.

Impugning Horner and his business ethics is just the latest in a string of tone-deaf moves by the Republican brain trust.

Sutton is a business person, but from a very different mold than Horner.

His chain food business is based on a low-cost, standardized product that can be replicated anywhere, with interchangeable customers. A successful chain appears superficially different, but is fundamentally the same as every other business in its niche.

Think Bud Lite Lime.

Sutton's business model seems to translate to his vision for government. A cheap, limited menu that is easy to live without.

In Horner's PR business, relationships with clients are very different from a Baja Sol, where the customer is basically a stomach with a wallet attached.

Yesterday, I implied that Sutton should know better. But maybe he doesn't.

Maybe he and his party don't get how business executives like Horner could bring some valuable skills and perspectives to government. And if my colleague is right, Sutton is helping to drive them away.

Soon, the Party of Business will be nothing more than the Party of Angry Pizza Men.

State Republican Party Chairman Tony Sutton is a businessman in his spare time (sort of like deputy chair Michael Brodkorb works for the state in his). You'd think those two would cut a fellow businessperson a little slack when he runs for a state office.

Instead Sutton saysthis about Independence Party
gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner, after he sold his stake his public relations company:

"We renew our call for Horner to immediately disclose his
client list so voters can make their own minds up about any potential
conflicts of interest. By failing to come clean on his client list,
Horner thumbs his nose at Minnesota's tradition of open government and
demonstrates that he is just another politician who can't be trusted."

Of course, GOP endorsee Tom Emmer has also "failed to come clean" in this way, so this presumably makes him an untrustworthy politician as well.

But we'd get a year's supply of free chalupas from Sutton before we got consistency out of him, so let's just move on.

Sutton's nastygram to Horner is a great example of why business people with deep
experience, sophisticated skills and broad connections look at
running for office and think, "why would I take that crap from those clowns?"

Sutton isn't really interested in transparency and open government. He just wants to use disclosure so he can hammer opponents with it. (And he and his party aren't alone in this.)

Here's how it works.

Let's say I decided to run for public office. I started my company in 1988, a year before Horner co-founded
Himle Horner. Although I've since sold it in a manner similar to Horner's, I still own a small piece.

Let's also say I was a prominent candidate for governor — a huge stretch, of course. Assume this blog never happened. Since I lack a criminal background, union affiliations and a record with an opposition party, Sutton's best line of attack would have to be my business affiliations over the years.

Suppose he insisted I immediately disclose my "client list." And suppose I wanted to comply. How would I do it?

Would I disclose:

Every client of any size?

Only current clients? Clients in the past five years? In the 20+ years since the company was founded?

Clients whose work I supervised? Or also clients my partners have responsibility for?

Net fees they paid the firm? Or all dollars that passed through our books to pay subcontractors?

If my partners objected, would I disclose their clients anyway?

If certain clients objected, would I tell them my political ambitions were more important than their concerns about confidentiality?

After a drumbeat from Sutton questioning why I was stalling because I must be hiding something, I might emerge from this process with a less-than-full disclosure.

That opens up the next round of fire. Here are a few samples that could be drawn from real life:

Why didn't he disclose all his paydays from defense contractors? Because they ended more than 12 years ago.

What about work with big insurance companies? Very old news and none involved lobbying or PR work.

Hmmm,medical device companies, managed care — how can we trust him on health care policy? Maybe because I learned something about it?

Look, banks, investment advisors and a company in the mortgage securitization business! What was his role in marketing flawed investments? The same as any other company that worked for those clients as that industry grew.

Contracts with the state!! Some of it competitively bid, all small potatoes.

Transparency is all well and good, but transparency isn't just up to the guy doing the disclosing. The company's clients also have a say in the matter. And if clients don't want their affairs made public, a responsible business owner has to listen.

Reticence generally isn't because the clients are involved in plots to bilk the public or influence legislation. It's a feature of a competitive business environment, and Sutton should know that.

There aren't many professional services business owners out there trying to drum up clients with this pitch: "Work with my company, but give me permission now to disclose our connection and how much your firm spends with us — in case I decide to run for office some day."

If there are, please raise your hands.

Yes, some agencies do publish a "client list," but it's usually selective, and they certainly don't publish how much those clients spend. Some disclose big name clients even if they did one small project for them five years ago. And some firms that have nothing to do with feeding at the public trough do not publish their client list at all — because they consider it to be sensitive competitive information.

Yes, Horner's former firm sometimes tries to influence public opinion and gain support for initiatives that could involve public dollars. But it's not clear to me how his client list will help the voters understand the nature of that work. Or whether a multi-billion-dollar corporation that employs thousands of Minnesotans would have more influence with Horner than with Tim Pawlenty.

Horner and his former partners are not registered lobbyists, and Horner says government contracts
accounted for no more than 10 percent of the company's business.

That sounds about right. No sane business owner would want more than that, because public contracts typically don't pay as well, require more documentation, tend to evaporate and can expose you to controversy.

And to the spittle of people like Sutton.

____________________________

Here's a disclosure of my Tom Horner connections. It's pretty
boring, but I'd really hate for some GOP hatchet man to think I was
hiding something that motivated this post.

During the years I ran my company, Horner's firm did some brief consulting related to a potential product liability issue for a client of mine, and John Himle and I spoke once or twice. After I sold my business, I did some staff enrichment sessions at his firm and spoke with Horner my one and only time. I collected 600 bucks.

Oh, yeah, and I was a speechwriter for the boss of John Himle's wife when Karen was at the St. Paul Companies.